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A New Way to Learn Chinese

Entrepreneur ShaoLan Hsueh aims to bridge the gap between East and West by teaching Westerners how to read Chinese

Entrepreneur and author ShaoLan Hsueh aims to teach English speakers how to start reading Chinese in under 10 minutes. See an excerpt for the video that was produced for her Kickstarter campaign. (Photo/Video: Chineasy)

By

Alexandra Wolfe

March 14, 2014 8:37 p.m. ET

Entrepreneur and author ShaoLan Hsueh thinks that English-speakers can start learning to read Chinese in less than 10 minutes. The language, she says, has more than 20,000 written characters, which most students in China learn by rote memorization. Ms. Hsueh's new book, "Chineasy," aims to simplify the symbols with colorful pictograms. "I'm not expecting people to be able to write a university dissertation after reading my book," she says. But it could mean the difference between ordering a steak or a snake...